Americans have become consumers of civilization itself.

Allan J. Feifer | September 6, 2026

It has become increasingly difficult to be a conservative in a nation that has forgotten the worth of an inheritance purchased over 250 years ago in blood, effort, and sacrifice. We live in a country whose achievements are unmatched in human history: a people who defeated global tyranny, expanded prosperity on a scale once unimaginable, and built an era of relative peace that earlier generations might have considered miraculous. Even our poorest citizens frequently live lives that would be considered comfortable by the middle classes of many nations. Yet this extraordinary record is dismissed or ignored by far too many people, even as millions abroad would trade places with them in a heartbeat.

How did we move from a culture shaped by the Greatest Generation — disciplined, grateful, and duty-bound — to a consumption culture that devours the fruits of civilization while scorning the roots that made them possible? Let’s first define the term:

Consumption culture is not merely the act of buying things; it is the belief that personal satisfaction is the highest good, that comfort is a right, and that meaning can be acquired rather than earned.

The consumption generation inherited extraordinary wealth, technological abundance, political freedom, unprecedented mobility and communication, and a level of personal comfort that most humans throughout history could scarcely have imagined. Because those blessings were simply there, people began to treat them as the natural state of the world rather than the hard-won product of institutions, discipline, sacrifice, property rights, markets, families, faith, innovation, accumulated capital, and individual risk. Inheritors mistook the........

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